Plato’s Shorter Ethical Works

Plato’s shorter ethical works show Socrates at work on topics related
to virtue, which he believes we should seek for the sake of the soul as we should
seek health for the body. Works in this group shows stylistic as well
as philosophic affinities and are generally considered to have been
written early in Plato’s career. The dialogues in this group are our
main source for the philosophical style and teaching of the Platonic
Socrates, who is thought by some scholars to be to a reasonable
approximation of the historical figure. In this article,
“Socrates” always refers to the Platonic figure in the
works under discussion here.

Sections 2 through 9 concern philosophical themes that are common to
the works under discussion. Section 10 deals with the intellectual
world that Plato uses as a backdrop for these dialogues. Sections 11
to 20 deal with the individual dialogues of the group.

At the center of Plato’s shorter ethical works is
the Apology of Socrates,
which consists of a speech purportedly given by Socrates at his
trial, and is probably the closest of Plato’s works to the historical
Socrates. The Apology is closely linked to two other
works. The first is
the Euthyphro,
which shows Socrates discussing reverence as he is about to report to
court for his indictment, an indictment that includes by implication a charge of
irreverence. The second is
the Crito,
which shows Socrates in prison on the day before his execution,
defending his decision to accept the penalty rather than corrupt the
law by bribing his way out of prison and away from Athens.
The Crito argument depends on a principle that is the bedrock
of Socratic ethics: that it is never right to do wrong, even in return
for wrong (49ab). The bedrock principle rules out the view that one
should do right by one’s friends and wrong by one’s enemies, a view
that had roots in Greek tradition.

Four of the dialogues in this group are concerned
with definition
of virtues or good qualities, especially virtues:
Euthyphro
(piety or reverence), Laches (courage),
Charmides (temperance or soundness of mind),
and Hippias Major
(the fine or beautiful). These dialogues of definition indirectly
raise questions about the mutual relations of the virtues, and this
question is taken up explicitly in the
Protagoras,
which introduces the doctrines of
the unity of virtue
and the impossibility of acrasia (the
doctrine that it is impossible to know what is right and still do
wrong). A corollary of this is the claim that no one does wrong
willingly, which supports part of Socrates’ argument in the
Apology. Another corollary is that in seeking virtue we
should seek knowledge about virtue. Nevertheless, Socrates entertains
strong doubts as to the teachability of virtue. Socrates sometimes
treats virtue on the analogy
of techne,
however, and techne means a body of specialized knowledge
that can be taught.

Aside from the Apology and Crito, which contain
extended speeches, the most prominent feature of these works is
Socrates’ use of questions calling for short answers. Although
Socrates uses this style of conversation for a number of different
purposes, it has been called the Socratic method, and in one of its
forms is has become known to scholars as
the elenchus.

Four dialogues in the group show Socrates in contrast
to sophists,
who were paid teachers of subjects ranging from
rhetoric
to mathematics. Some sophists claimed expertise on virtue, and
Socrates took it as part of his mission to investigate such
claims. The Protagoras treats its eponymous sophist
with some respect, but the two Hippias
dialogues (major and minor)
poke fun at their namesake, and
the Euthydemus
shows its sophists as puzzle-makers who cannot make good their claim
to teach virtue.

Following the lead of Vlastos (1971 and 1992), many scholars represent
the philosophical content of these dialogues as teachings of Socrates.
This article follows that convention. On Socrates, see Benson 1992,
Brickhouse and Smith 2000, Rappe and Kamtekar 2005, Rudebusch 2009,
and Bussanich and Smith (eds.) 2013. On Socrates’ ethical theory, see
the first half of Irwin 1995.

The general rules of elenchus are these: Socrates’ partner
(often called his interlocutor) must answer every question according
to his own beliefs, and the partner (not the audience if there is one)
judges the outcome. Socrates’ questions start from his partner’s
initial statement, which usually implies a claim to wisdom or to
knowledge of a subject related to virtue. Sometimes Socrates seeks
clarification of the claim; at other times he proceeds directly to
elicit his partner’s agreement to premises that will turn out to be
inconsistent with the initial claim. In some cases, the premises have
no authority aside from the partner’s agreement; in others, Socrates
provides an argument for premises, usually in the form of an
epagoge, a general inference from a set of examples. An
elenchus usually concludes in the discomfiture of the partner, who now
appears unable to support his initial statement. Some form of
elenchus is probably responsible for Socrates’ claim in the
Apology that he has demonstrated that every claimant to
wisdom whom he has examined has failed the test (21b–23b). In the
dialogues of this group, the elenchus is a negative
instrument, but in the Gorgias Socrates seems to use it in
support of
his bedrock principle that one should never commit injustice, the principle he uses in his argument in Crito.
In some cases, an elenchus seems only to discredit a person; in
others it refutes a position that is under discussion. In those cases,
it points the dialogue that contains it toward
aporia—an impasse. Socrates applied the method to
challenge views he probably held himself (as we shall see in
the Laches), and he implies in the Hippias Major
that he has used elenchus to prevent his being complacent
with his own ignorance (304c–e).

The philosophical puzzle of the elenchus is to see how it
could lead to any firm result, if its premises have no authority
beyond the partner’s agreement. Perhaps the method can do no more than
convict a partner of confusion (as Hugh Benson has contended), but
Vlastos has argued persuasively that elenchus in fact supports
Socrates’ ethical doctrine: Socrates believes he has grounds for
clinging to beliefs of his that have been well tested and not
refuted.

When Socrates asks a question such as “What is
reverence?” he has in mind a question that can be answered only
in certain ways. To begin with, he will not be satisfied with an
answer that points only to a certain kind of reverence, or only to an
example of reverence. The answer must identify a feature that (1)
belongs to every kind of reverence (generality requirement), and (2)
to nothing that is not reverent (exclusion requirement), and (3) has
explanatory power.

The first two requirements appear in many texts, but the third
emerges most clearly in the
Euthyphro.
The Euthyphro seems to require that a definition state the
essence (ousia) of the thing being defined, by contrast with
a statement of that thing’s non-essential attributes (pathe);
such a statement could be true without qualifying as a definition. The
statement “reverence is what all the gods love” states
only a pathos, because it does not explain what makes
something reverent. We are left to speculate about what would count as
stating the essence of reverence; probably it would state what makes
things reverent in the way that having three straight sides and three
angles makes a plane figure a triangle, while giving delight to
geometers does not. Clarification for the explanation requirement
comes from a further requirement, that the explanatory cause of
Xness must be always X (the synonymy
requirement). Hence Socrates rejects answers to “What is the
fine?” that identify entities that are not reliably fine
(e.g. Hippias Major 289b;cf. Phaedo 105d).

Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Socrates is satisfied with
any of the definitions of virtues that he considers. Mastery of
definitions would be sufficient for the expert knowledge of virtue
that Socrates disclaims, so either he lacks that mastery or his
disclaimer is (as some scholars believe) ironic.

Socrates seems to assume in these works that knowledge of definitions
has priority in two ways: (1) One must know what reverence is before
one could know of any particular action that it is reverent (whether,
for example, it is reverent to prosecute one’s father), and so for the
other virtues and other cases. (2) One must know what reverence is
before one could know what properties reverence has (for
example, whether it is teachable). The first of these has been attacked as the
Socratic fallacy by Peter Geach; Socrates himself thinks he knows
things for which he appears to be unable to give
definitions. Luckily, no text unequivocally assigns either claim to
Socrates, and the matter is under debate. A charitable view would
assign to Socrates in place of (1) the view that only expert knowledge on
the model of techne requires the ability to
give definitions, and in place of (2) the view that we cannot know
what the essential features of something are until we know its
essence.

Socrates nevertheless has strong opinions about virtues, opinions that
guide his search for definitions—for example, that courage is
noble or fine (Laches 193d) and that we should pursue virtue above
all else. It is one thing to aim at virtue and still another to be
able to determine what actions virtue requires, as Vasiliou contends.
But if Socrates thinks he lacks mastery of definitions of virtues,
then we must ask how he thinks he can be right enough about the
virtues even to look for their definitions. This puzzle is taken up to
some extent in the Meno.

On priority of definition, see Benson 2000 and 2013, Wolfsdorf 2004, and
Vasiliou 2008. For the view that it is wisdom that is prior, see Pangle 2014.

“Virtue” translates arete, which Socrates’
contemporaries used of any sort of excellence that leads to success. A
number of writers before Socrates had used the word and its associated
vocabulary primarily in ethical contexts. But Socrates was probably
the first to identify ethical virtue with what is analogous in the
soul to health.

In Socrates’ usage, virtue is the ability to do what is right and
resist doing what is wrong. As we learn especially from the
Crito, Socrates holds that wrong actions harm one’s
character, which he identifies in other dialogues as the soul.
Because the soul is more important to us than the body, we should care
about nothing so much as virtue, and Socrates understands his role in
Athens as that of shaming Athenians into taking this most important
concern seriously through the care of the soul (29e–30a).

In inquiring after the virtues, Socrates assumes that they have some
status as entities, especially in Euthyphro and Hippies
Major. Some scholars have thought this assumption represented an
early theory of Platonic forms (Allen 1970; see also Prior 2013 and
Woodruff forthcoming.

The principal virtues of interest to Socrates in this group of
dialogues are courage (andreia), reverence or piety
(eusebeia, to hosion), wisdom (sophia),
temperance or sound-mindedness (sophrosune), and justice
(dikaiosune).

These dialogues raise two general questions about virtues that are
important to ethical theory, one concerning instrumentality and
another concerning unity. They also raise a question about the analogy
between virtue and expert knowledge (techne).

Are virtues instrumental for other goods, or are they good in
themselves? If they are instrumental, are they instrumental in respect
of themselves, by causing virtue to grow in the holders of virtue and
in those on whom they have influence? Or are they instrumental in
helping us procure external goods for ourselves? On the
instrumentality of virtue there was an important dispute between
Vlastos and Irwin.

In a famous passage in Republic 1, which has some affinities
with dialogues of our group, a sophist named Thrasymachus challenges
Socrates to define justice without saying (as he was apparently known
for doing) that justice is the beneficial or the advantageous
(336d). Instead, Thrasymachus insists on the precision that specifies
who receives the benefit or advantage of justice; in Thrasymachus’
view it is the rulers who reap the benefits, while those who are ruled
pay a heavy price. Socrates defends the use of terms such as
“beneficial” in defining justice, implying that he would
accept some sort of instrumental view, but he plainly holds that
justice is beneficial to everyone who is touched by it. This is the
main theme of the Republic, but it also resonates with the
shorter ethical dialogues, as we shall see. The ending of
the Hippias Major
bears on the problem of instrumentality through a discussion of the
beneficial as replicating its own goodness (as virtue engenders
virtue). Socrates appears to be the first to make eudaemonia (happiness, the good life) a goal in ethics. On the relation between virtue and happiness in Socrates’ thought, see Reshotko 2013

Socrates argues in the Protagoras for the unity of virtues, a
thesis that has been variously interpreted and may be supported by
other dialogues in this group. Vlastos famously explained the thesis
as bi-conditional: that whoever has one virtue has them all. Others
(Penner, Woodruff) have argued for a stronger thesis, such that the
definitions of all the virtues would have a common essence. Dialogues
of definition, such as the Laches, seem to presuppose that
each virtue has its own definition, but, at the same time, such
dialogues seem to be moving towards the view that the essence of each
virtue is wisdom or knowledge. The Protagoras defines courage
as the knowledge of what is and is not to be feared (360d), but the
Laches rejects a similar definition on the grounds that it
does not differentiate courage adequately from other virtues
(199e). And the Euthyphro ends in aporia (at an
impasse) because Socrates is unable to differentiate reverence
adequately from justice. Efforts to define sound mindedness
(sophrosune) in the Charmides end in an impasse
partly owing to the difficulty of specifying the subject of the
knowledge that is the essence of this virtue. If (as seems the case)
Socrates is never satisfied with a definition of a virtue, this may be
because the virtues cannot be differentiated at all.

On the unity of virtue, see especially Vlastos 1972 and 1994, Penner
1973, Woodruff 1977, and Rudebusch 2017.

Techne is, at the most basic level, what can be learned and
taught. The word is usually used for a body of professional knowledge,
mastered by experts on whom laypeople may safely rely. It is often
translated “art” or “craft” or
“skill,” but in these pages it will be rendered
“expert knowledge.” Navigation and medicine are frequent
examples of expert knowledge. To establish your credentials in expert
knowledge, you should be able to identify your teachers and students
(Laches 185b), as well as the specific field of your
expertise, which you must have mastered as a whole (e.g., Ion
532b, ff.). You should also, ideally, be able to give an account of
the aim of your profession (e.g. health for medicine, Laches
190a, cf. Gorgias 465a). Expert knowledge must be rational in
its ability to account for what it does.

Socrates seems to inquire after virtue as if it were, or at least
resembled, the expert knowledge of living well, or the expert
knowledge of care for the soul. If so, this knowledge could be taught
and learned. Yet Socrates has grave doubts as to whether virtue can be
taught (Protagoras 319a, ff.).

If Socrates takes virtue to be a kind of knowledge, then he holds a view known as intellectualism. Does Socrates, or does he not, believe that virtue is to be understood
on the analogy with expert knowledge? If he believes that virtue is
instrumental to happiness (as some scholars hold), then he might well
believe that virtue is a kind of practical knowledge, and the analogy
would be helpful. If he believes (as other scholars hold) that virtue is
at least partly constitutive of happiness, then the analogy seems
misleading, since bodies of expert knowledge are generally valued
as merely instrumental for their goals. If Socrates does not subscribe to the
analogy, however, why does he use it in argument? He uses it in
argument in the context of the larger question whether virtue can be
taught, probably on the assumption that, if it can be taught, it can
be taught as expert knowledge is taught. But Socrates questions whether it can be taught
at all. The
Meno
will explore a process of learning without teaching; this process is
known as recollection.

The word sophia bridges a gap; usually translated
“wisdom,” it may be used as a rough synonym for
techne, but it may also be used for less specific forms of
wisdom that are not obviously taught or learned and may lack the
rational features of expert knowledge. When experts fail at tasks related to their expertise, Socrates naturally attribute the failure to a lack of knowledge; if he does so in the case of virtue, he commits himself to the view that no one can do wrong in full knowledge; on this see the next section.

On techne and the techne
analogy, see Irwin 1995. For a skeptical view of Socrates’ commitment
to techne, see Roochnik 1996 and 2002. On the issue of Socrates’ intellectualism, see Brickhouse and Smith 2013.

Socrates’ doctrine on this, apparently, is that knowledge of what is
right cannot be overcome by pleasure or passion. After Aristotle,
philosophers have termed this the issue of acrasia.
Acrasia, weakness of will, would occur when someone who knows
what is right does what is wrong under the influence of passion or in
order to secure pleasure.

Holders of expert knowledge are supposed to be reliable in the
exercise of that knowledge; they are professionals, and part of their
professionalism is to ply their trade competently regardless of the
weight of passion or the blandishments of pleasure. So
the techne analogy might be construed to imply the
impossibility of acrasia. Socrates’ argument for this in
the Protagoras, however, is based on his
demonstration that the popular explanation for weak-willed behavior
(that knowledge is overcome by pleasure) is incoherent. Socrates is
not denying that people do wrong under the influence of passion or
desire for pleasure; he is rejecting the usual explanation for this,
and denying that it occurs in the case of those who have the relevant knowledge. Plainly, the
doctrine presupposes a stringent criterion for knowledge, at least as
demanding as the test for
techne.

A related doctrine is that no one errs voluntarily, a doctrine Plato holds consistently from the Apology to the Laws. If
acrasia is impossible, then every moral error involves a
cognitive failure about the action or the principle that it violates,
and cognitive errors negative (or at least weaken) responsibility for
actions caused by those errors. Socrates generally assumes that
actions taken in ignorance are involuntary, and that therefore the
proper response to wrongdoing is not retribution, but education, as he
says in the Apology (25e–26a).

In the
Hippias Minor,
by contrast, Socrates argues that it is better to do wrong
voluntarily than in ignorance. Although he is unhappy with this
conclusion, he gives no direct hints as to how to avoid it.

Aristophanes depicted Socrates in the
Clouds (421 BCE) as a participant in the two revolutions that
constituted the new learning of the period, and these were both
exciting and disturbing to ordinary Athenians.

Sophists. The Fifth Century saw an explosion of
interest in traveling teachers, later known as sophists, who taught a number of subjects, including the art of words, later known as
rhetoric. Although the art of words was widely used for entertainment,
it also had applications in deliberative and forensic rhetoric, and
the sophists were accused of teaching their pupils how to win on
behalf of a bad cause—to make the worse argument into the
stronger. Socrates is accused of this in the Clouds: a
student emerges from his instruction with an argument that purports to
justify a son’s whipping his father.

Clever techniques of argument were taught by some sophists, as were
serious devices for the effective staging of adversary debate, on
which the city-states of those periods depended, both for decisions
about policy and for verdicts in criminal cases. Some people felt that
these techniques corrupted political and legal processes. Plato took
pains to depict Socrates not only as different from the sophists, but
as opposed to them on many points. This is a theme in several
dialogues in our group: Euthydemus, Hippias Minor,
Hippias Major, and Protagoras.

Natural scientists. Thinkers of the period were developing
explanations for natural phenomena that displaced the gods from their
traditional roles as causes. Again, Socrates is depicted in the
Clouds as involved in this sort of explanation. Again, Plato
takes pains in the Apology and later works to show that the mature Socrates is not interested in this
project (Phaedo 96a–d, Phaedrus 229c–e).

Unique among Plato’s works, this is a formal speech. The aim of
forensic rhetoric by a defendant is normally acquittal, but Socrates’
aim here seems to be to bring out the truth of his life, regardless of
how it affects the jury. Still, although he begins with the usual disclaimer of speech-craft, Socrates speaks artfully enough that the result could
be used to illustrate a textbook of rhetorical technique.

The official charge is that he corrupted the young men of Athens, and
that he introduced new gods; this implies the old charge from
Aristophanes Clouds, that Socrates replaced the gods with
naturalistic explanations, and that he corrupted the youth by teaching
rhetoric, “to make the worse argument win.” Socrates
denies having taught anything, and disclaims any interest in natural
science or the teaching of rhetoric.

How, then, did he come under such suspicion? Socrates claims it is
because he led a life that seemed strange to his compatriots, in
fulfillment of his mission. Socrates claims to have been given this
mission by the god, evidently Apollo, and he identifies this mission
with his gadfly role of shaming people into sharing his quest for
virtue. He may have developed elenchus (which derives from a word for
shame) for this purpose, but he has another purpose for elenchus as
well. Once the oracle declared that no one was wiser than he, Socrates
had set out to test the oracle’s meaning by examining all those who
claimed to be wise. Finding none who could pass the test, he concluded
that the meaning of the oracle was probably this: that true wisdom
belongs to the god, and no human being can be wiser than a person who
is aware, as Socrates says he is, of his own inadequacy in wisdom. In
keeping with this result, Socrates is cautious in his philosophical
claims in the
Apology. On the subject of death, he presents himself as
agnostic there, although other texts show him to have been committed to
the immortality of the soul.

Some scholars have argued that Socrates’ defense is ironic. On this see Leibowitz 2014.

In the Crito Socrates states the doctrines most important to
his conception of the ethical life. He will give up his life rather
than compromise his ethics. His peers would all agree that life is not
worth living with a badly deformed body; they should agree that life
is even less worth living with the sort of deformation that is caused
by acting wrongly. Wrongdoing damages the soul; that is why Socrates
believes we must strive to avoid wrongdoing at all costs.

Crito, a wealthy Athenian friend of Socrates, has bribed the jailers
and prepared means for Socrates to escape from Athens, but Socrates
refuses on the grounds that to do so would be to damage the laws
wrongfully, and this violates his
bedrock principle
that one must never do wrong, even in return for a wrong. He applies
this principle, he says, using his old method of accepting the
reasoning (logos) that seems best to him as he reasons about
it (46b). The bedrock principle has guided his life so far, and it
would be absurd to give it up now merely because his circumstances
have changed (46b, 49ab).

When Crito appeals to popular opinion on the matter, Socrates replies
that the only authority he would accept on the matter would be that of
someone who is expert on the matter at hand, which is the effects of
doing right and doing. Because these are analogous to the effects of
health and disease on the body, Socrates is looking for an expert on
moral health and corruption, apparently for the soul. In the absence
of such an expert, however, he must make up his own mind. His argument
at this stage is highly condensed, leading to a question Crito cannot
answer: One should abide by one’s agreements provided they are just;
would I be abiding by my agreement if I escaped without persuading the
city (49e–50a)?

Because Crito cannot answer, Socrates personifies the laws and
imagines their response, on behalf of his obligation to them. (Here as
elsewhere, with the exception of the Apology, Socrates avoids
giving an extensive speech in his own persona.) The argument the laws give
is elaborate, and appeals mainly to two points: an agreement they
allege Socrates made to obey them by choosing to live in Athens, and
the benefits they claim Socrates has received from them, which place
Socrates under a stronger obligation to the laws than he has to his
parents. Neither Crito nor Socrates can reply to the arguments given
by the laws, and their conclusion is allowed to stand.

The conclusion of these personified laws—that one must obey the
city in all things (51bc)—seems to conflict with a memorable
text in the Apology, as Grote first pointed out; there
Socrates promises to disobey the court if it should let him off on the
condition that he give up his mission in Athens (29d). Scholarly
opinions differ over how to reconcile these texts.

A dialogue of definition, the Euthyphro takes up the subject
of reverence or piety, a virtue that traditionally bears on the
keeping of oaths, the treatment of the weak (such as prisoners and
suppliants), family relationships, and respect toward the gods. The
discussion here lifts reverence out of its traditional context, while
marking sharply the difference between reasoning about ethics and
accepting authority and implying support for
the unity of virtue.

Socrates is on his way to answer the indictment against him; Euthyphro
is apparently a well-known crank on religious matters; his name
ironically means “straight-thinker.” He has just lodged a
charge against his father for the accidental death of a servant
accused of murder. Most Athenians would probably have been shocked by
the irreverence of Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father, but
Euthyphro is confident he is doing the right thing. His confidence
rests on the special knowledge he claims on the subject of
reverence.

Socrates presupposes that such special knowledge implies knowledge of
the definition of reverence. If Euthyphro knows what reverence is, he
should teach that to Socrates, so that Socrates may use the knowledge
in defense during his own trial. Euthyphro’s first two answers fail
the first two conditions of Socratic definition; the
first is not general (“what I am doing now”—6d), and
the second (being loved by a god) would make the same things both
reverent and irreverent; one god’s love would make an action reverent,
while another god’s hate would make the same action irreverent
(8ab). Socrates helps Euthyphro to a better answer (reverence is what
is loved by all the gods), but this succumbs to the requirement that a
definition state the essence of its subject (11ab). The essence of
reverence cannot be conferred on reverent actions by the gods’
approval of them; their approval, rather, must follow on their
partaking of the essential nature of reverence. So actions are made
reverent not by pleasing a god, but by satisfying the definition of
reverence—or so most modern readers have inferred.

Socrates then explores the
idea that reverence is a proper part of justice, without finding a way
to specify what part it is. Attempts to differentiate reverence from
justice by appeal to the gods lead back to the better answer that was
refuted earlier. The conclusion is aporia (impasse); many
scholars believe that it points to a theoretical point, a component of
Socrates’ doctrine of the unity of virtue. There is no way to differentiate
reverence from justice in a definition, because there is no essential difference between them;
reverence is simply justice described with reference to the love that
the gods bear for justice. Other scholars have held that Socratic reverence is the specific duty we have to the gods that we cultivate all of virtue in our souls, as suggested by Socrates’ claim in the Apology that his mission was given him by the god (Woodruff 2019).

A dialogue of definition, the Charmides takes up the subject
of temperance or sound-mindedness (sophrosune). This is the
virtue that produces self-control, the ability to resist the
temptation to act violently in satisfaction of desires, the temptation
that, in Plato’s scheme of things, characteristically leads tyrants to
disaster. The main theme of this dialogue is the role of knowledge in
virtue.

The dramatic date of the dialogue is before Plato’s birth, and
Socrates’ main partners are Plato’s maternal uncle, Charmides, then a
teenager, and Charmides’ older first cousin Critias. By the time Plato
wrote the dialogue, both men had been killed in the battle of the
Piraeus, in 403BCE. Critias had been the leader of the group known to
their enemies as the Thirty Tyrants, and Charmides had been among the
extended leadership established by the Thirty. The excesses of the
Thirty, who had conducted a violent and rapacious reign of terror in
404–03, provide an historical counterpoint to the declared interest of
these men in sound-mindedness almost thirty years earlier.

The topic arises when Charmides is praised for both external and
internal good qualities, including sound-mindedness. Socrates assumes
that Charmides must have some sense of what this virtue is, if he has
it within him (158e). Charmides answers first that sound-mindedness is
a kind of quietness and order (159b); indeed, he has a reputation for
sound-mindedness because of his quiet and orderly good manners. This
fails because sound-mindedness is among those things that are always
fine, and quietness is fine only in certain contexts. The relevant
condition on definition in this case is that of explanation; the
proposed explanation does not consistently have the feature it is
supposed to explain. Charmides’ second attempt fails by the same
criterion: a sense of shame looks like sound-mindedness in some
contexts, but it appears not always to be a good thing
(160e–161b). His third attempt is plagiarized, probably from Critias,
who may have heard it from Socrates: Sound-mindedness is doing one’s
own things (a phrase identical to that used in the Republic
to define justice). Charmides is unable to explain what this
means. Critias takes over, in order to defend his definition, and is
led to gloss it as doing good things (163e).

Socrates then introduces the issue of knowledge, which Critias agrees
is necessary to the exercise of sound-mindedness. But knowledge of
what? Critias suggests that it is self-knowledge that is
sound-mindedness (164d). Critias has in mind the kind of
self-knowledge that consists in knowing what one knows and what one
does not know. From this it is a short step to defining the virtue as
the knowledge of itself and the other kinds of knowledge—i.e.,
the knowledge that enables one to evaluate all sorts of knowledge
claims (166e). Socrates raises two questions about this kind of
knowledge: whether it is possible, and whether it is beneficial
(relevant because the virtue was assumed to be beneficial). It would
seem impossible for there to be such a kind of knowledge, since all
other examples of kinds of knowledge have subject matter specific to
each, and this would be an exception. To know whether a candidate has
knowledge of medicine, for example, one would need to know
medicine. As for the second question, it would appear that such
knowledge is beneficial (173a, ff.), because it would allow us to
submit all decisions to knowledge. But the appearance is deceptive,
because the knowledge of knowledge does not add anything to the
various kinds of knowledge (such as medicine) on which we depend.

The kind of knowledge that would be most beneficial would be knowledge
of good and evil (174b, ff.), but this is not the same thing as
sound-mindedness. So this line of inquiry has led to the contrary
results that the virtue in question is and is not beneficial. The
speakers confess aporia and pledge to continue. Critias and
Charmides threaten to use force to wrest continuing education from
Socrates. This is a joke, but it comes with a disturbing historical
irony, because Charmides will follow Critias into a leadership
position in the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. Their use of force will
terrorize the people, but not achieve what Critias wants in the long
run.

As with other aporetic dialogues, we are left without a clear
answer. As with Laches and Euthyphro, however, the
inquiry has led to a suggestion that goes beyond defining one among a
number of independent virtues to investigating something of unbounded
ethical importance, the knowledge of good and evil.

A dialogue of definition, the Laches takes up the subject of
courage, broadly construed. Unique among ancient writings about
courage, the Laches takes courage far beyond the battlefield,
seeking a definition for courage not only in war but also in
seafaring, in illness, in poverty, and in politics (191d). The
principal interlocutors are men of military experience, Laches and
Nicias. Nicias is known to us for his prominence in the Sicilian
expedition narrated in melancholy detail by Thucydides (Books 6 and
7). He was enormously brave in battle, but a coward in politics,
afraid to tell the Athenian people how dangerously situated their army
was. His life in itself illustrates the importance, recognized by
Socrates, of cultivating courage in every arenas of action or
suffering

The dialogue begins with a specific query about military training for
the young. A teacher is in town, displaying a new technique for
fighting in armor, and two elderly fathers (Lysimachus and Melesias)
are trying to determine whether they should send their young sons to
this teacher. Lacking accomplishments, the fathers have no confidence
in their ability to choose how their sons should be educated, and they
have asked two generals, Laches and Nicias, to observe the display and
advise them. Nicias advises them to accept advice from Socrates as
well, because Socrates has referred him to an excellent teacher of music
(180d); Laches supports Socrates’ reputation, citing his actions
at the battle of Delium, a disastrous defeat for Athens in which, as
we know from other sources, Socrates showed extraordinary courage
(181b). This example will cast a long shadow over the subsequent
discussion, for Socrates’ courage in this case was shown not merely in
defeat, but during a rout.

Socrates makes a move that will become familiar in other dialogues.
The anxious fathers have consulted generals, and Socrates thinks they
are on the right track; they should consult an expert (185a), but for
some time Socrates leaves it unclear what the expert should be an
expert about. The anxious fathers had not expressed concern about
ethics, but Socrates takes their question as ethical. He assumes that
the purpose of any form of military training is to instill courage in
the soul (185e, with 190d), and he infers they are seeking an expert
in that. An expert in instilling X must know what X
is (190a).

If there is an expert on military training, then, that expert will
be able to say what courage is. Laches tries first, with an answer that
is inconsistent with his praise for Socrates: Courage is staying at
your post and not running away (190e). Socrates had
shown courage during a retreat, the military maneuver that most calls for
courage. Laches’ proposal plainly fails by the generality
requirement, and Socrates shows this with examples of courage that do
not satisfy the proposed definition (191a–d).

Laches’ second try is that courage is a kind of endurance of the soul
(192c), But what kind of endurance, foolish or wise? Here Laches
enters a tangle; he does not want to say that courage is ever foolish,
because then courage would not be reliably kalon, as all
present believe that it is. Nor does he want to say that courage
is sophos, since mastery of the matter at hand seems to render
actions less courageous (192c–193e). Unable to see a way out of this
tangle, Laches agrees with Socrates that he does not have a good
answer.

Laches’ tangle requires someone to specify the kind of wisdom that
courage requires, and Nicias is prepared to do that. Courage, he
proposes, is knowledge of what should inspire terror or confidence in
war or any other circumstance (195a); Socrates will understand this to
be knowledge of future goods and evils. This, as we shall see, is
very similar to the definition that Socrates will give to Protagoras
in the Protagoras (360d). Even so, the proposal will go down
to defeat. Knowledge of good and evil is not carved up by temporal
words such as “future”, and knowledge of good and evil
plainly embraces far more than courage; indeed, it would be the whole
of virtue (199e). But Nicias has been clear that courage is only a
part of virtue (198a, from 190cd). So he too has failed to establish
that he knows what courage is.

How should readers take this outcome? Has Socrates refuted to his own
satisfaction the position he takes in the Protagoras? The
matter is debated by scholars. Perhaps we can apply here a tool given
us in the Euthyphro, where a statement about reverence (that
it is loved by all the gods) was taken to be true, but not the
definition of reverence. In a similar way, “knowledge of future
goods and evils” could be true of courage without satisfying the
conditions of definition. In this case, that would be because (it
seems) courage cannot be differentiated by definition from virtue as a
whole, just as reverence apparently could not be differentiated from
justice. Like the Euthyphro, then, the Laches could
be read as supporting the unity of virtue. But this reading is not
obvious; taken by itself, the dialogue seems to end on ground that is
hostile to the unity of virtue.

The authenticity of this dialogue has been questioned
(see Section 17). A dialogue of definition,
the Hippias Major takes up the subject of the fine or
beautiful (to kalon), one of the two most general terms of
commendation in ancient Greek, the other being
agathon, good, nearly a synonym. Being kalon is the
primary feature of each of the virtues, and, by implication, the
dialogue points to an important Socratic idea about ethics: That in
being kalon a virtue is beneficial.

Hippias is a sophist from Elis, in the northwest corner of the
Peloponnesus; he takes pride in being a polymath, an expert on many
subjects including rhetoric, history, and mathematics. The question
arises because Hippias boasts about the high quality of a speech he
will soon make, and he invites Socrates to attend, along with others
capable of judging a speech. Socrates by implication invokes the
priority of definition:
How can anyone judge what is fine or foul in a speech, without
knowing what it is to be fine (286c)? “Fine” translates the Greek kalon, a general term of commendation that is often rendered as “beautiful,” “amiable,” or “noble,” but often simply means “good.” Its opposite, aischron means “ugly,” “disgusting,” “shameful,” or “foul.”

At this point Socrates introduces a strikingly
unique feature of the dialogue, the Questioner—someone who,
Socrates says, will not allow him to get away with claims that imply
knowledge, but persists in asking him shame-inducing questions such as
this one about the fine. Since the Questioner meets Socrates in the privacy of his
home, we must imagine that he is Socrates’ alter ego, and that the
process referred to is the self-elenchus by which Socrates is driven
to his famous disclaimer of knowledge.

The dialogue reviews seven definitions, three proposed by Hippias, and
four more sophisticated ones proposed by Socrates. All are refuted,
and the work ends at an impasse, as is usual for works in this group.
It does, nevertheless, point to the idea that a good (such as virtue,
probably) can be beneficial by replicating itself.

Hippias makes three category mistakes, one in each of his answers to
the question, “What is the Fine?” (287e–293c) He
identifies three kinds of entity that can be fine—a particular
(a fine girl), a mass substance (gold), and a universal (living the
traditional good life). Socrates’ double strategy is the same in each
case: (1) To show that the answer fails the generality requirement; it
does not explain all the cases of being fine. (2) To show that the
fine entity to which Hippias refers is not fine in every context. This
violates the exclusion requirement, for it does not exclude non-fine
things. It also implies that the answer fails to satisfy the
explanation requirement; generally, to explain Xness,
something must be X no matter what (synonymy requirement). If
fire explains heat, that is because it is always hot; but gold cannot
explain fineness, because gold is not always fine; it is foul as material for
cookware. All of these answers fail because they identify things that
are fine in some contexts, leaving unanswered the question what makes
them fine in those contexts but not in others.

Hippias’ three answers have much in common, but they range over three
different metaphysical types, particulars, mass substances, and
universals. Hippias has attempted greater degrees of generality in his
second and third answers (gold and living the good life), but the more
general answers still fail. What Socrates seeks is not so much
generality as it is explanatory power.

The remaining four answers are better candidates and come (as in the
Euthyphro) from Socrates, though in this case he attributes
them to the Questioner, his alter ego. They are that the fine is the appropriate, the
able, the beneficial, and pleasure through sight and hearing. These
represent a single strategy, which tries to tease out the deeper
meaning in the intuition that good things, such as whatever is fine,
are beneficial. The appropriate and the able are attractive answers,
but only when they are taken to imply that the fine is
beneficial. This answer, however, leads to an odd result: if to be
fine is to be productive of the good, then it would appear that the
fine cannot be good, which is unacceptable. The conclusion invites us
to ask whether a good can be beneficial in being able to replicate
itself. (See the section
on instrumentality.)
The last answer attempts an aesthetic construction of the fine, and
founders on the problem of disjunctive definition. “What’s fine
is hard,” Socrates concludes, resigned to be unable to judge
what is fine or foul in a speech until he learns what the fine is.

The authenticity of the dialogue has been in doubt since the middle of
the nineteenth century; although many scholars accept it as genuine,
there are notable exceptions such as Charles Kahn and Holger Thesleff.
The argument against authenticity is based partly on the silence of
classical sources about it, and partly on the style. Aristotle’s
reference to a dialogue called simply the Hippias is plainly
to the Hippias Minor (Metaphysics 1025a6–13). The
style is most likely from the fourth century BCE (Plato’s century),
but some have argued that its vocabulary places the dialogue late in
the fourth century, too late for Platonic authorship. The argument in
favor of authenticity follows the presumption in favor of the ancient
canon of Thrasyllus (which is right in most cases) and appeals to the
unique and inventive features of the dialogue, which betray more
artistry than could be expected from a forger. As with a number of
dialogues from the canon, however, the case must be left not
proven.

The Hippias Minor shows Socrates defeating a sophist on an
ethical matter: whether it is better to do wrong voluntarily or in
ignorance. Socrates concludes, somewhat unhappily, that it is better
to do wrong voluntarily. The issue arises in the context of Hippias’
multiple claims to expertise; he can win speaking contests on any
topic, and he has excelled in many different arts, from shoemaking to
the art of memory (363cd, 368be). Socrates asks a question that at
first appears to be about Homer—which is the better man,
Achilles or Odysseus? The tradition has been to regard Achilles as
honest, and Odysseus as given to lying, but it is this tradition that
Socrates intends to bring into question. He argues, by example, that
an expert in any given field is best able to speak false in that
field, since an amateur liar might stumble on the truth. It follows
that a good liar will be an expert in the subject of his lies, and he
will also be a good truth teller in that field, and vice versa. So if
Achilles is a good truth teller, he will be a good liar as well, and
if Odysseus is a good liar, he will be a good truth teller also.

Hippias rejects this conclusion. He argues that Homer shows Achilles
to be honest and Odysseus to be a liar through the speech at
Iliad 9.308, ff., which Achilles addresses to Odysseus:
“I hate like the gates of hell that man who says one thing and
has another in his mind.” Hippias is doubly mistaken in using
this passage as evidence for his view. At most this would show that
Achilles (not Homer) takes Odysseus to be a liar, but in fact the text
clearly refers to Agamemnon. Achilles takes Odysseus’ word for what
Agamemnon has promised him, but he does not believe that this is a
truthful promise.

Homer cannot be interrogated on the matter, so Socrates will
investigate only the opinion of Hippias (365cd), although he will cite
Homeric texts in support of his position. Socrates argues that
Achilles is more deceptive than Odysseus, because on several occasions
he does not stay true to what he has said. Hippias rightly points out
that Achilles had no intention to deceive; he merely said what was in
his heart at each moment. Because his falsehood is involuntary, argues
Hippias, Achilles is the better man. Socrates disagrees: the voluntary
liar knows his subject better and has the better mind. He is therefore
the better man of the two.

This leads Socrates to his main theme: whether one who does wrong
voluntarily is better or worse than someone who does wrong
involuntarily (373c). Again arguing by example, Socrates shows that
any failure, ethical or otherwise, would be better if it came as the
result of a deliberate choice, because that would imply that the
person who erred had the power to do the thing right if he or she
wanted to. He concludes: “Then he who voluntarily goes wrong
(hekonhamartanon), doing shameful and unjust
things, if indeed he exists, would be no other than the good
man” (376b). Hippias cannot accept this line of reasoning, and
Socrates admits he is uncomfortable with it (“No more can I
concede the point to myself”).

The argument for this conclusion assumed from the outset that it is
possible to go wrong voluntarily; this was Hippias’ proposal in the
case of Odysseus. But Socrates has assumed or stated the contrary elsewhere: no one goes wrong voluntarily (Apology 26a, Protagoras 345e). The argument also assumes that people do good and bad
actions on the basis of techne; it is reasonable to suppose
that the
techne
that could lead to good actions could also lead to bad ones. But
techne can be taught, so that if good and bad action are due
to a techne, then people could be taught the power
to act well or poorly. But Socrates does not believe that virtue can
be taught (Protagoras 319a–320c). In sum, the awkward
conclusion would follow from premises that Hippias supports, but not
from the views Socrates elsewhere affirms.

The Euthydemus is more complex in structure than the other
dialogues in this group. A substantial framing dialogue between
Socrates and Crito surrounds and intrudes upon a reported discussion
involving Socrates and two brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus,
traveling teachers who have much in common with the sophists, and who
claim to teach virtue, rather than the forensic rhetoric expected of
such experts (274d). The discussion takes place at the Lyceum, for the
benefit of the boy Clinias and his admirer Ctesippus. The main
question in both the frame and the embedded dialogue concerns
education: To what sort of teaching should the young be entrusted?

Socrates challenges the brothers to show that, in addition to teaching
virtue, they can convince a pupil that he should learn virtue from
them. Instead of rising to this challenge directly, the brothers
entangle Clinias in two verbal traps and are preparing a third when
Socrates interrupts with the diagnosis (obviously correct) that these
traps depend on ignoring the careful use of verbal distinctions
(277d–278a).

Socrates then demonstrates his method of attracting a young person to
the pursuit of virtue and wisdom, which, by the end of the passage,
have been conflated into wisdom. With Clinias, he lists various good
things: Wealth, health, good looks, and honor comprise one list, while
courage, sound-mindedness, justice, and wisdom comprise another. Then
Socrates surprises the boy by claiming that good fortune simply is
wisdom; he defends the claim by arguing that no good thing is
beneficial unless its use is guided by wisdom. It follows that the
items on the first list are neither good nor bad in themselves (281d),
and that the principal good to pursue is wisdom. We are probably left
to suppose that the virtues on the second list are identical to
wisdom. In any event, Clinias now expresses his wish to acquire
wisdom.

The brothers intervene with new and more disturbing arguments: it is
not possible to speak false or to hold a false view or to contradict,
they say, possibly echoing theses of the sophist Protagoras.

The second conversation between Socrates and Clinias treats wisdom as
a techne and explores the subordination of one techne to
another, as the art of the general (winning battles) is subordinate to
the art of politics (making use of victories). The supreme techne he
calls kingly or royal, and this is the techne that guides the use of all others
(291c), but this line of inquiry founders on a question that appears
unanswerable: What is the specific knowledge that is given by the
kingly techne? A techne is supposed to have a well defined subject
matter, but the techne that is wisdom would oversee all subject matter
and therefore would seem to have no subject matter proper to itself.
Perhaps Socrates thinks the subject is good and evil, or perhaps
virtue, but he does not say either, nor does he explain how these could
be the subjects of
a techne.
Because a techne is, by definition, teachable, Socrates would have to
establish that such knowledge can be taught, but as we see from the
Protagoras
Socrates has grave doubts on this score.

A few more traps are set by the brothers, who exploit the similarity
between complete (or absolute) and incomplete (or relative)
predication: the dog is a dog in any semantic context, but he is a
father in relation to his puppies only, and not to his master.

Socrates returns to his framing discussion with Crito on the
overarching theme of the dialogue, the question of what sort of study
should be pursued as philosophy, and this is left as a challenge for
Crito. The dialogue ends, as do most in this group,
inconclusively.

The Protagoras is the most substantial dialogue in this
group. Its general theme is the question whether virtue can be
taught, and this leads to the question whether virtue is wisdom or
knowledge. Other topics treated in the dialogue are
the unity of virtue,
the instrumentality of virtue for pleasure, and the
denial of
acrasia.

The two main speakers divide on these questions in an unexpected way:
Socrates, who believes that virtue cannot be taught, and that he does
not teach it, defends the unity of all virtues with wisdom, even
courage; Protagoras, who believes that virtue can be taught, and that
he teaches it, denies that courage is wisdom or any sort of knowledge. Moreover,
Socrates, who elsewhere rejects hedonism, seems to identify virtue
with a hedonic calculus in this dialogue, through an argument that leads
to his famous claim that
of acrasia (weakness of will) is impossible.

The setting of the Protagoras is striking: the cast of
characters is the same as that in the Symposium, but here
they are gathered for exhibitions of the skill of the sophists,
especially of Protagoras. Socrates, speaking on behalf of a
prospective student, prompts Protagoras to say what it is that he
teaches. It is, says Protagoras, good judgment, so that one may act
and speak most effectively both in private and in public matters
(318e).

In a substantial comment (319a–320c), Socrates understands this to
mean that Protagoras teaches the techne of good citizenship,
which he takes to be the virtue of citizens, and to include political
wisdom. Socrates argues that such virtue cannot be taught; if it
could, Pericles would have imparted it to his sons, but he failed to
do so. This argument might convince Socrates’ audience, but it cannot
have convinced Socrates, who was no great admirer of Pericles.

Protagoras responds with an enormous speech, often called the
“great speech,” (320c–328d), which is divided into a myth
and an account (logos). Many scholars accept the content of
the speech as Protagorean, although the setting surely belongs to
historical fiction. In sum, Protagoras thinks that the political
virtues of justice and reverence or sound-mindedness are necessary to
human communities, and that all normal human beings therefore have the
capacity to acquire those virtues to some extent (although not all to
the same extent), just as all human beings have the capacity to learn
a language. As in the case of language, the community teaches the
political virtues to its citizens from early childhood on, and
Protagoras discusses in some detail the traditional stages in
education which he believes lead to this result. He also provides a
theory of punishment as educational.

Socrates does not take on Protagoras’ claims
directly. Instead, he takes another tack and engages Protagoras in
three rounds. In the first round, he asks about
the unity of virtues,
arguing for the unity of justice and piety, of wisdom and
self-control, and of self-control and justice (328d–334c). The series
of arguments is inconclusive; Protagoras’ consent to them is grudging,
and scholarly opinion is divided as to their soundness. The series
breaks down over the issue of sound-mindedness and injustice. It would
appear that one could apply a sound mind to unjust actions (say, by
not letting sensual pleasures distract one from a life of theft). But
Socrates seems about to say that both justice and sound-mindedness aim
at what is beneficial to human beings, and this provokes Protagoras to
affirm the incompleteness of the word “advantageous”:
different things are advantageous to different species, and in
different applications.

There follows a discussion on how to discuss such issues, and
Protagoras starts a new line of conversation, this one dealing with
the interpretation of a poem by Simonides that seems to deal with the
acquisition and retention of virtue (338e–48a). Protagoras finds what
looks like an inconsistency in the poem, but Socrates introduces
distinctions (foreign to the text of the poem) that allow him to read
Simonides as supporting the Socratic views that (1) it is difficult to
acquire perfect virtue and (2) no one does wrong voluntarily. Socrates
does not believe, however, that it is wise to discourse upon poets who
are not present to explain themselves. It is far better for them to
present their own opinions (347c–348a).

Socrates brings the discussion back to the unity of virtue, here
arguing for the unity of courage and wisdom (348b–351b). Socrates
argues that knowledge leads to confidence, but Protagoras insists that
this is irrelevant, because not all confident people are
courageous.

Socrates then approaches the wisdom-virtue question from another
angle, that
of acrasia
(weakness of will, 351b–358d), seeking to show that there is a kind
of wisdom that is sufficient for virtue. This turns out to be a
hedonic calculus that gives full value to temporally distant pleasures
and pains. Socrates’ argument is targeted on those who think that
wisdom can be overpowered by pleasure, as is the case with someone
whose knowledge of the ill-effects of certain foods eats them anyway
because of the pleasure they afford. If the scale of pleasures is the
only scale of good, however, and if the agents in this case have the
wisdom to calculate correctly the pleasure the agents may reasonably
expect from each choice, then they cannot be led by pleasure to choose
the worse, or less pleasurable course. The popular explanation for
eating what we know is bad for us turns out, on this showing, to be
incoherent. Some philosophers have thought Socrates simply overlooked
the psychological facts of such cases, but Aristotle makes
distinctions that allow him to retain the Socratic view that ethical
failure implies cognitive failure without sacrificing common ideas
about human motivation (Nicomachean Ethics 7). The matter was
and still is controversial among philosophers.

Does the passage imply that Socrates is a hedonist? Protagoras does
not accept the narrow hedonism of Socrates’ premise, so it appears
that the hedonism is Socrates’ own. It is not anyone else’s. And yet
we know that Socrates is elsewhere opposed to hedonism; his solution
to the ethical problem of the Crito is based not on pleasure
but on what, after serious consideration, he believes justice to
require. There is no consensus on how to solve the puzzle. Could
Socrates defend his doctrine on knowledge here without the hedonist
premise? In the Republic he will maintain at least part of that
doctrine by introducing a division of the soul into three parts. But
if the soul is undivided, hedonism may be Socrates’ best defense (Moss
2014).

The dialogue ends with a renewal of the discussion on wisdom and
courage (358d–360e). Socrates presses upon a reluctant Protagoras his
idea that courage is the knowledge of that which is and is not to be
feared (360d), a doctrine that, in effect, he refutes as a definition
for courage in the Laches. The dialogue
ends inconclusively with agreement that the matters at issue require
more discussion.

–––, 2008, The Trials of Reason: Plato and
the Crafting of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Woodruff, P., 1977, “Socrates on the Parts of Virtue,”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 2,
New Essays on Plato and the Pre-Socratics, R. Shiner and J.
King-Farlow, (eds.), pp. 101-116.